


Things You Should Have Noticed

by abyss1826



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Abusive Relationship, Human!Stuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-28
Updated: 2015-05-28
Packaged: 2018-04-01 16:53:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4027570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abyss1826/pseuds/abyss1826
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Makara's never suspected there to be anything wrong with their 'adopted' family member until he runs away. Will Equius be missing forever?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

 

Your name is Gamzee Makara and for a while you have been worried about your friend Equius.

You've known Equius since seventh grade when he entered the school on some sort of program. No one ever talked about it. Your father always suspected something was up, but you didn't actually find out he was homeless until your older brother Kurloz got into a fight with your dad and stormed out of the house. When you left to chase after him he went to the park behind the middle school, a few blocks away from your house, and you found Equius sleeping on one of the benches.

When your father found out he went over with the two of you and took him in.

He's shared a bedroom with you ever since.

Now Kurloz is out of school, and you and your best bro are sophomores in high school. Its the third quarter, and you've really started to notice that Equius has been a lot quieter lately.

He hasn't been participating in art or science class as much as he normally did, and you've noticed that he hasn't really seemed to be sleeping much.

He's oddly jumpy too, which is something that had been getting better during eighth grade, but now that you think about it more it started to get worse around the middle of last year. Like, worse than just from his old abusive family. This is something entirely different.

He's also been staying a lot more covered around you, even though it's getting warm out and the old apartment over your dad's art shop doesn’t have good air conditioning. He stayed covered around you guys for a couple of months until your dad voiced his opinion of people shunning their lgbt kids to be ridiculous and hateful over dinner one night.

Then they came out as trans.

And everything made sense, because he had never told any of you why his parents and older brother were so abusive towards him that he just ran away. You just thought they were a bad family and singled him out or something.

But this is something completely different and to be honest you’re getting kind of scared for him.

He's had his withdrawn moments before but this is different. This one isn't right.

He's stopped drawing in color.

He's stopped writing in his journals like he always used to.

He's been staying later after school for reasons he only ever mumbles so you can never quite tell what he's saying.

Your a light sleeper, and you've heard him waking up crying a little more than once a week. Whenever you roll over to pop your head down to the bottom bunk he says that its nothing, that he's fine.

Its beginning to scare you.

**  
  
**

Your last period is gym, and it's the only class out of three that you've shared with him this year. First quarter you had art and science. Second quarter you had nothing. You barely saw him actually.

Like most of your classes there's a mix of all the grades. That's just how your school is set up.

Your running laps around the track next to him. There are some kids from the football team hiding behind the bleachers; the ones who always skip class and push people around. Caliborn’s one of them. He's an upperclassmen and you cannot fathom how he and his twin sister ever shared a womb. Their just so fucking different. She doesn't go to this school, she goes to a private all girls school, but you know her because she goes to school with Kurloz's girlfriend and the three of them play music together sometimes.

Whenever you two run past the bleachers Equius seems to try and distance himself. Every lap he does this. Something has to be up with them. For the past two weeks you've been trying to hyper analyze his actions to see if you can piece together what's going on with him.

Whenever you see him notice Caliborn his shoulders tense up and he grips whatever it is he's holding tighter. This you have seen happen enough for you to know it isn't a coincidence.

That day you make him walk home with you. He refuses to tell you what's going on and insist that he's fine, that its nothing, that you’re just being weird.

The next day Equius leaves gym ahead of you and you don't see him until late that night.

You can still hear his crying despite the running shower, and you pretend you didn't hear anything.

When you wake up that morning he's not in your room. His backpack is gone but all of this school supplies are in a neat pile on his bed. You panic. A bunch of his clothes are gone and the small shoebox he kept his savings from doing little jobs for people around town was empty.

You wake up your dad and Kurloz. He can't have gotten far, right?

You all hastily get dressed and instead of going to school you drive around the town with Kurloz while your dad drives through one of the nearby cities in a car he borrowed from a friend.

You're scared for him. Why would he even do this? He was perfectly safe with you guys! Where would he even go? If he doesn't want to be found he won't be in any homeless shelters but your dad said he was going to check those anyway.

The next day you go to school. The teachers are all concerned for him and you sit in a classroom during lunch to try and avoid people's questions. You've told all your friends what happened because you have the same group, so everyone who's asking are people you don't even really know. It just seems weird.

In gym last period you pass Caliborn and his friends. When he notices you he talks louder to make sure you hear.

"Stupid bitch is probably dead in a ditch somewhere. She probably deserved it anyways."

He sneers at you when you look over at him.

Karkat walks home with you and his dad let's him stay over the night. You mention what Caliborn said, and how you noticed the way Equius acted so uncomfortable around him.

"Well everyone in their right mind is fucking uncomfortable around him."

"Yeah," you say, "but this was just, weird, I guess."

Karkat is quiet for a moment and you look at him. You're both sitting on the old wooden floor of your bedroom. He's leaning with his back up against the bunk bed and you're with yours against the drawers of Eq's desk.

"Maybe he ran away because of Caliborn."

"What do you mean?"

"You know how fucking manipulative and nasty he is, and what he said to you was obviously about Equius. I mean, he eventually ran away when his family abused him, and I'm pretty sure my dad has helped enough kids like him for me to know the shit some people do. I mean, no one else who knew really gave a shit and you guys sure as hell wouldn't have given him crap, so that really only leaves Caliborn."

You mull this over for a bit.

“Why wouldn’t he have just told me if he was having problems with Caliborn then?”

“That’s not what people in his situation think is an option. Especially people who have been in this shit twice. Especially Equius, like, I’m pretty sure that, even if he’d never been in that kind of situation, I’m pretty sure he’s just fucking stubborn anyway.”

Your bro pauses for a second, looking at the ceiling. Then he looks at you.

“Hey, you know that little notebook thing he always carries around and writes in and shit?”

“Yeah?”

“Are they still here or did he take them with him?”

“Uh, I don’t know. Those are his personal things, man, I don’t really think we should-”

“Gamzee your friend is missing, and these things are like, the only lead we fucking have here. His privacy really shouldn’t matter at this point. Now where did he keep them?”

You grudgingly stand up and open the drawer you were leaning on. There’s around five in there, along with all of the different colored pens he used. You take out the most recent three and give them to Karkat.

“You should probably trace back if you want to see how long this shit’s been going on.”

He leafs through the most recent, starting in the middle of the school year, and stops on the second page. Then he reads it, cringes, and picks up the one preceding from the end of last year.  Again, he stops at the near beginning and picks up the next, which he spends a bit more time on. It isn’t until around a third of the way through that he dog-ears a page.

“Second Quarter of freshman year.”

“What?”

“That’s when Caliborn started bothering him. Well, thats when the weirder shit happened, he does mention smaller things about Caliborn just being an asshole in general, but I didn’t entirely count that.”

You stay silent.

“What quarter is this again?” he asks.  
“It’s almost the end of third,” you say quietly.

“Over a year already.”

How could you not have noticed what was going on? You could tell that something was up, but, not until recently. You never would have guessed how long it had been going on.

“Why did he let Caliborn push him around?”

“Uhhh,” Karkat mumbles as he flips to the dog eared page. “He knew his old family…. He said that if Equius told anyone about what he was doing he’d tell them where he was and they’d bring him back.”

“Seriously?”

“Yep.”

“What was he doing to him? Is there anything in the last one about where he planned on going?”

“Nothing on the last one, but…”

“But what?”

“Maybe we should just take these straight to the police.”

“Why?”

“I’m not sure we want to read all of this.”

“Why not?”

“It’s probably best to have someone deal with it professionally.”

“Why don’t we want to read it?” you hiss, “What, did you see something?”

“Kind of…”

“Well?”

“It’s probably best if we just give it to an adult Gam.”

“What. Did. It. Say.”

“‘I don’t care anymore as long as I don’t get pregnant.’”

“What?!”

“You heard me.”

“So, do we take these to your dad or the police first?”

“Oh no, we’re taking those to my dad. He’ll actually motherfucking know what to do with shit.”

“Okay.”

Your dad had already been getting things together. Equius’s yearbook picture, a physical description of him, an explanation of the situation since he’s technically already a missing person under his birth name so the police know what’s going on; just all the things that you need in order to file a useful missing persons report. The journals should help them put a case together against Caliborn or something.

All you really want though is to get your friend back safe and sound.

Your dad and your brother remind you to stay away from Caliborn, and to be honest they probably asked Karkat and Tav to make sure you did too.

You wanna kick his worthless ass so fucking bad but you don't want to disappoint them. You know he isn't worth the effort and the trouble that you would get into but it doesn't stop the wanting.

It doesn't stop it at all.

It's been almost a month since your best friend went missing. The police are waiting until he shows up to make a full case against Caliborn. His sister Calliope found a notebook of plans he had to do to Eq and other people he planned on targeting, complete with information and leverage he could use for blackmail.

You weren't that surprised to find out that you were on the list. Though you were crossed out he assumed he could get you with the fact that your dad and brother have done illegal shit. Sadly for him you know all about that and they've already served their time. Besides, all they were doing was trying to  support you while you were growing up after your mom died.

Its actually because of all this that your dad even knows the police and is on relatively good personal terms with them.

It's been a year a since your friend Equius ran away. Caliborn was sent to jail a couple of months ago based on what Equius wrote in his journals and what Caliborn himself wrote as well.

It doesn't help anything though.

Caliborn being thrown to rot where he belongs doesn't bring your friend back.

It's been three years since your friend ran away. You've graduated high school but it doesn't feel right because he should be sitting next to you but he isn't.

You've decided not to go to collage for now. No point in spending the money if you don't even know what you're going to do there in the first place, right?

It's been six years since Equius ran away.

In the past you always did a double take whenever you saw someone with long black hair pulled into a braid, wearing something he would wear.

But now you know he's not coming back.

He's gone forever, and it's all because you didn't notice something was wrong soon enough.

Its all your fault.

It's been almost seven years since Equius disappeared. The anniversary of that morning is in two weeks. You have it marked on your bedroom calendar in red marker.

Every year your family and some of the old friends who you haven't lost touch with will go on a drive to look for him like you all did everyday after school that week.

As your dad is about to close up the art shop Calliope walks in and tells you that they were all meeting at the park by the middle school.

Your dad and Kurloz nod you off. They'll go on their own, you guess, and you walk there with Calli.

Calli's one of the nicest people that you know. She majored in art,and owns a cute ceramics shop downtown. In the back there are things that you can pay to paint yourself, and then she mails it to them. Next door the Lalondes have an antique shop, and Rose holds a knitting class in the empty room in the back. Further down the street the Maryam sisters set up a fabric store where you can also get fitted for custom made items. Not that many people from your old class moved that far from home.

The two of you walk silently. Its almost dark, and you watch the light catch on the dogwood trees that are planted all along the residential street leading up to the park.

You ask her why you're all doing it so early this year, and she responds that everyone was busy for the actual week it happened.

You shouldn't have asked. Of course everyone would have something going on. Their lives don't stop just because he went missing all those years ago.

Nothing does.

Nothing ever will.

It's been 12 years since Equius ran away. Your walking to the train station so you can get to work when you hear someone playing a lively tune on a violin down the street.

When you walk past them the two of you make eye contact as you drop a couple of dollars into the jar.

You stop in your tracks.

They nearly stop playing.

You let Equius finish the song before you hug him.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Origeonally this was going to be something completely different, but ethen I had a second idea that worked better. I did a lot on the first iteration though, but it won't be finished. I just thought I'd put it here anyway.

Your name is Gamzee Makara and for a while you have been worried about your friend Equius.

You've known Equius since seventh grade when he entered the school on some sort of program. No one ever talked about it. Your father always suspected something was up, but you didn't actually find out he was homeless until your older brother Kurloz got into a fight with your dad and stormed out of the house. When you left to chase after him he went to the park behind the middle school, a few blocks away from your house, and you found Equius sleeping on one of the benches.

When your father found out he went over with the two of you and took him in.

He's shared a bedroom with you ever since.

Now Kurloz is out of school, and you and your best bro are sophomores in high school. Its the third quarter, and you've really started to notice that Equius has been a lot quieter lately.

He hasn't been participating in art or science class as much as he normally did, and you've noticed that he hasn't really seemed to be sleeping much.

He's oddly jumpy too, which is something that had been getting better during eighth grade, but now that you think about it more it started to get worse around the middle of last year. Like, worse than just from his old abusive family. This is something entirely different.

He's also been staying a lot more covered around you, even though it's getting warm out and the old apartment over your dad's art shop doesn’t have good air conditioning. He stayed covered around you guys for a couple of months until your dad voiced his opinion of people shunning their lgbt kids to be ridiculous and hateful over dinner one night.

Then they came out as trans.

And everything made sense, because he had never told any of you why his parents and older brother were so abusive towards him that he just ran away. You just thought they were a bad family and singled him out or something.

But this is something completely different and to be honest you’re getting kind of scared for him.

He's had his withdrawn moments before but this is different. This one isn't right.

He's stopped drawing in color.

He's stopped writing in his journals like he always used to.

He's been staying later after school for reasons he only ever mumbles so you can never quite tell what he's saying.

Your a light sleeper, and you've heard him waking up crying a little more than once a week. Whenever you roll over to pop your head down to the bottom bunk he says that its nothing, that he's fine.

Its beginning to scare you.

**  
  
**

Your last period is gym, and it's the only class out of three that you've shared with him this year. First quarter you had art and science. Second quarter you had nothing. You barely saw him actually.

Like most of your classes there's a mix of all the grades. That's just how your school is set up.

Your running laps around the track next to him. There are some kids from the football team hiding behind the bleachers; the ones who always skip class and push people around. Caliborn’s one of them. He's an upperclassmen and you cannot fathom how he and his twin sister ever shared a womb. Their just so fucking different. She doesn't go to this school, she goes to a private all girls school, but you know her because she goes to school with Kurloz's girlfriend and the three of them play music together sometimes.

Whenever you two run past the bleachers Equius seems to try and distance himself. Every lap he does this. Something has to be up with them. For the past two weeks you've been trying to hyper analyze his actions to see if you can piece together what's going on with him.

Whenever you see him notice Caliborn his shoulders tense up and he grips whatever it is he's holding tighter. This you have seen happen enough for you to know it isn't a coincidence.

That day you make him walk home with you. He refuses to tell you what's going on and insist that he's fine, that its nothing, that you’re just being weird.

The next day Equius leaves gym ahead of you and you don't see him until late that night.

You can still hear his crying despite the running shower, and you pretend you didn't hear anything.

****  
  


The next day Kurloz picks you up from school and makes him come with you. While you're in the room you share with Equius doing homework he's downstairs doing who knows what and you accidentally knock over a pile of things from his desk. When you gather them up you pick up his most recent journal. It opened to a page dated early December before break. As you go to close it you notice Caliborn's name written.

A ping of panic resounds within you and you hastily open it back up.

What you read horrifies you.

You can't get rid of the image it leaves you with but you go backwards in the journal. The earliest dated entry having to do with him is early October. You look to find another one you remember Equius having in freshman year. He's still mentioned in it, later in the year. The journal from before that dates the first encounter as being around second quarter.

This has been going on for over a year already.

How did you not notice any of this sooner.

How could someone do something like this?

He's literally blackmailing Equius because he can send him back to his family.

"They miss their little girl you know, they'd be very pleased to have you back."

As soon as Kurloz gets home you show them what you found.

He stays quiet, but that's how you can tell how brutally furious he is.

He calmly puts his jacket back on and leaves the house again, telling you that he may be out past dinner and to tell dad that he has a few things to do before he gets home.

Neither of you tell Equius what you found out. You’re both just glad that it should be over now.

**  
  
**

The next two days Caliborn doesn't come to school.

**  
  
**

The day he comes back Equius skips lunch period, but you know he's alone because Caliborn and his crew are across the cafeteria.

When you and Kurloz are waiting out front of the school for Equius so the three of you can walk home you have a bad feeling though. The bad feeling only doubles when its been five minutes and Equius still hasn't come out.

You look at one another and run behind the school, where you read that most things end up happening.

Kurloz is wrapping his hands so he doesn't hurt himself dealing Caliborn another round of pain since whatever he did a few days ago didn't get the message in deep enough.

You flip on the crappy video recorder on your phone so you two have proof of whatever you end up walking in on.

When you get to them Caliborn is alone. He has Equius pinned against the wall and he's holding him up off the ground by his neck. His hand has red lines where Equius was trying to scratch him.

When Caliborn heard the two of your running towards him he dropped Equius and ran.

Equius crumpled to the ground and didn't move.

You called 911 while your brother chased Caliborn.

**  
  
**

Your crying, sitting on the glass littered pavement holding him until the paramedics come.

You call your dad and quickly tell him what happened. He yells at you for only going to Kurloz when you found out what was wrong, but he’s quick and to the point with getting it out of the way. Soon he’s on his way, and by the time he picks you up to drive to the hospital Kurloz is back. Caliborn got away this time.

When you finally get to see him he’s on a respirator.

A nurse is explaining what happened to your father.

“Strangulation, luckily no signs of struggle or she’d be worse off-”

“He,” your dad corrects.

“We use birth genders on the charts because it makes a slight difference on what we have to look at depending on the circumstances. Is he on hormone therapy of any kind?”

“No.”

“Okay, well, they had to take off the binder so that his lungs would be able to expand to a greater capacity. We will have to have them under surveillance for the next 36 hours to see if any of the more life threatening  physical symptoms occur. Documentations of the injuries will have to be taken as well as part of legal procedure.”

You stop listening at this point.

But then you hear the nurse say something about seizures.

Your dad replies with something along the lines of a rather long uncertain 'um', and both he and Kurloz look at you.

"Do you know if Eq's family has a history of seizures or something?"

"Why the fuck would I know that?"

"I don't know, may as well ask."

"So you are not related to the patient?"

"No, we're not, but his family is not an option either."

"Do you have their birth name? We may be able to look up some files having to do with them if they were born at one of our locations."

Your dad and brother look at you again.

"Alicia Zahhak."

"Zahhak?"

"Yes."

"Alrighty then, I'll look through our files and see what can be found." The nurse leaves with a smile.

You see that your dad has a little folder with pieces of paper in it.he hands one to Kurloz and sits down reading another. His brow is furrowed. That's not a good sign.

You turn and look back at your friend. In the hospital gown his arms aren't covered, and you can see green and purple bruises that you can only guess didn't come just from the encounter you saw.

You're angry.

You're angry at Caliborn for doing this to him.

You're angry at yourself for not noticing something was wrong earlier.

You're angry at Equius for not coming to you for help when Caliborn first started to bother him.

You come out of your thoughts when you notice Kurloz and your dad murmuring to one another in Arabic. Its almost weird hearing it again. The three of you started using it less once Equius was around because English is the only common language the four of you share.

Its nice hearing it again.

Kurloz hands you one of the pamphlets. Its on brain hypoxia. Caused by there being a lack of blood flow to the brain. In the medium symptom list are: temporary memory loss, difficulty with some motor functions and difficulty paying attention or making sound decisions.

Severe symptoms include seizures, stopped breathing, coma and brain death.

The nurse had said that he wasn't all that injured, or as injured as he could have been, right?

That means everything is gonna be fine right?

Right?

You hear something shift slightly and you look over at Equius. His eyes are open.

He says something quietly but it isn't something that you recognize to be a word.

They look in your direction, not quite completely at you but close enough.

"Och, hej," he says.

"What?"

"Poweidziałem hej."

"Um, Equius?" You say, unsurely, "I don't think you're speaking english."

"Co masz na myśli, że nie mówię po angielsku?"

The other two are standing around him with you now, looking concerned.

"I think you're speaking Polish actually." You elaborate.

He looks at you dumbfounded. Kurloz and your dad look at you confused.

"Where the fuck did he learn Polish?" Your brother asks.

"English is his second language, same as us."

Your father nods in understanding.

"Can you tell what we're saying?" He asks.

"Tak."

"That was Polish again."

"Nie?"

"Okay if 'Tak' means yes just nod." He sighs.

Equius nods.

"So you can tell what we're saying."

"Tak."

"Did you think you were speaking English before?"

"Tak."

"We should probably get a nurse or something," Kurloz starts, "right? This is probably something they'll have to know about."

"What szpital?"

"We're gonna go get a nurse okay we'll be right back."

They both leave.

"What hoh-szpital"

"What hospital?"

"Yeh"

"I think it's a Macneal?"

"No" He looks so frustrated.

"Place"

"Like where we are in town?"

"Yeh"

"Uhhhh... I didn't really notice when my dad drove us we can ask when they get back or something."

Then you remember the nurse from before.

"Hey did you know if seizures run in your family because a nurse asked and I think it was kind of important."

Equius shrugged.

Your dad and Kurloz come back saying that one of the nurses went to go find if someone on staff somewhere in the building was fluent in polish. He knew at least one person was but they might work night shifts so they wouldn't be here right now so we'd have to wait.

Another nurse comes in and checks his eyes, one of his pupils won't dilate as well as the other but its apparently better than last time they checked so that's good. They can't really ask him about how he's feeling until he's speaking English, but they take notes on the fact that this happened.

Its about twenty minutes before the nurse Kurloz and your dad found comes in too say that he found someone from Hospice who should be over shortly.

When Equius hears Hospice you notice him tense a bit. And he stays tense. His heart monitor gets faster, but thankfully not uneven, and he just shakes his head slightly and stops looking at you when you ask what's wrong.

When you see the polish-speaking man from Hospice nothing seems wrong asides from Equius's reaction.

He squints his eyes shut and won't look up.

You notice the name tag on the man's uniform.

It says Zahhak.

Your dad notices as well and inhales sharply.

“Oh, uh, he’s speaking english again actually, it’s fine, sorry to bring you all the way over here for nothing,” he says quickly with a feigned smile.

“Oh, um, okay?” Dr. Zahhak said as your dad stepped in front of him, blocking Equius from his view. “Should I get the nurses so that the child can be evaluated?”

“No No it’s fine we wouldn’t want to inconvenience you”

**  
  
**

 

 

 

**That's where it stops.**


End file.
